The End Of The Marriage Tradition

In his TAC review of Maggie Gallagher’s and John Corvino’s book debating the same-sex marriage question, Andre Archie concludes:

Debating Same-Sex Marriage is an important book that lays bare the philosophical arguments for and against the legalization of same-sex marriage. Although I am partial to Gallagher’s arguments, Corvino’s position is well argued and more in tune with the times. Perhaps the traditionalist’s view of marriage as a heterosexual institution should consider the position recently advocated by David Blankenhorn, a former opponent of same-sex marriage who has come to believe that marriage as a social practice will be strengthened by including homosexual couples in such a conservative institution. Whether or not Blankenhorn is correct, whichever side wins the debate over same-sex marriage, the losing side will be permanently marginalized.

The phrase “more in tune with the times” does a lot of work here, and I wish Archie had expanded on that insight. It’s why I believe we trads have lost this argument. In fact, I don’t think there is an argument to be had outside of elite circles. People feel what they feel. I’m pretty sure I don’t know many people against same-sex marriage who will change their minds on the basis of an argument. Likewise, I am completely certain that I don’t know a single person in favor of SSM who would be open to changing his or her mind on the basis of a rational argument. In fact, for many, to be opposed to same-sex marriage is evidence on its face that one is irrational, according to the new orthodoxy — just as a generation ago, to believe in same-sex marriage was taken by the mainstream as a sign that one is irrational.

The point is this: The great strength of the pro-SSM crowd has been in their ability to reveal to ordinary people that SSM is consonant with what they already believe about marriage.

This is what “more in tune with the times” means. A couple of weeks ago, M.Z. Hemingway took issue with something I’d written downplaying the importance of argument in the same-sex marriage argument. I asserted that if one had to make a case for having children, and for privileging traditional marriage, the battle for those things is largely lost. Mollie disagreed, quoting Martin Luther then saying:

Luther might have even believed, to some extent, that “if you have to make a ‘case’ for marriage, or for having children, the battle is largely lost.” But he still made it and did good work (at the very least for helping me understand how to serve my husband and view childcare as a holy blessing).

So when we get all discouraged about the decline of civilization as it relates to whatever our issue of greatest concern is, I think we should also try to keep some perspective.

These battles for things that matter — be they religious liberty or property rights or the right to defend our families or to defend our weakest neighbors in the womb — have seen better days and they have seen worse days. But the worst thing is to just descend into the land of “What, at this point, does it really matter?” Right?

I think I agree with this, but I do need to clarify. I would never agree that making a case for anything one believes in is futile. It’s just that I think that reason and argument are much less persuasive than many people think, given that our emotivist culture values feeling more than rationality. Most people nowadays decide what they want to believe, then find the arguments that will justify it.

I once had a civil argument with a woman, in which I laid out my position in the usual way: “Premiss + premiss + premiss = conclusion.” She responded: “Well, that’s your opinion; you have yours, and I have mine.” I pointed out that no, I wasn’t asserting an opinion, I was making an argument based on facts and logic. Either my facts are wrong, or my logic is. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. The key thing was that she genuinely didn’t see any reason to challenge my facts or my logic. She believed what she wanted to believe, and in her way of thinking, I believed what I wanted to believe, so what was the big deal?

If conservatives are supposed to preserve the best of a society’s and culture’s ways while building on received traditions to accommodate the inevitable problems that come from human failure (or, in Christian theology, the Fall), then theories about how to conserve tradition are oxymoronic. Traditional societies by their very nature conserve their ways without the help of philosophers or statesmen telling them how to do it. Conservatism is inherently opposed to ideology; thinking about how to be traditional, as opposed simply to living with received customs, is an indication that tradition has ended.

It would seem to follow, then, that the moment traditional marriage became seen as a choice we made as a society, as opposed to something that just is, then the battle was over.

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130 Responses to The End Of The Marriage Tradition

I guess, I shouldn’t comment, for I’m neither a conservative nor American. But I wonder if the author has a point concerning his example discussing with that woman.

First, I find it disturbing that the author didn’t remember Hume’s remark about the problems of interfering from positive, descriptive premises (‘Is’) to a normative, prescriptive conclusion (‘Ought’) when he had his discussion with the women.

If he did, at least one of the premises must have been a normative, prescriptive premise, and these are no facts. It this sense, the woman acknowledged the obvious: There’s usually no point to argue about a normative premise. It will only lead to other normative premises ad nauseam unless one stops voluntarily at some point.

Since conservatism seems to be based on the normative premise that “things ought to be done the way they have been done until now” (I’m paraphrasing), no conservative argument can be persuasive to a progressive (and visa versa).

Whether one subscribes to the fundamental premises does seem to be based on emotions: Did the past tradition lead to good outcomes now, or did it not? Obviously, people will differ on whether today’s situation is good or bad for them, all things considered.

Second, the deeper the discussion, the more additional factual premises need to be considered. Usually, these are no real facts, but observations, at best. Sometimes, these are more like speculations, based on hasty generalizations, or slippery slopes.

Given these premises, the woman does seem to be justified to cut the discussion short. Is is justified to call this ‘lazy’? It’s not as if the discussion about the freedom to marry for gays started yesterday. Each side has had enough time to make their arguments, it seems.

“There is no definition as to what kind of cuisine you can serve, or what constitutes “French cusinine”, or virtually any item you have on your menu. You can call it whatever you want, you can cook it any way you like, and you can sell it at whatever price you think the public will bear.”

Actually, you can’t cook it however you like. You can’t even cook whatever you like — my own state has a foie gras ban. If that isn’t the state imposing the morality of some folks on another group, I don’t know what is.

I think an analogy to wine appellations or to ‘organic’ designation. I can’t sell Lake County wine under a Napa Valley label. The state not only enforces this, but created the Napa appellation and set its limits in the first place. Likewise, I can’t sell vegetables which were fertilized with chemically produced nitrogen as ‘organic’, even those there is no practical difference between ‘organic’ and inorganic — and indeed different standards.

Aside from not encouraging behavior which has been proven to be harmful to society (and given such behavior state certification will do exactly that), homosexual marriage is much more than a fraud than selling California wine under a Frenchified name. It devalues the brand (whether the brand has been devalued by other things is beside the point).

That’s like saying “As a geometric figure, a circle is the same as a square, except for the absence of straight lines. Everything else stays the same…”

Well, no, even as an analogy, that’s false. To turn a square into a circle, you would have to change the position of every single point on the square (but four, in the best case).

Your argument is an example of mixing the two notions about marriage, the one being the legal requirements, which are very few, and the other being one’s theological and philosophical notions, which are almost infinite in possible variety.

Obviously, to you, SSM would change a great deal about what you think marriage is. But it remains the case, that legally speaking it changes very little. No more than changing the requirements for voting, to give women the franchise.

We all understand that you have personal and religious reasons to think SSM is an abomination of nature. That doesn’t mean the law has to reflect those, any more than restaurant licensing need to reflect your notions of what proper French cuisine ought to be. Already, it reflects almost none of your notions about marriage, and relinquishing the gender requirements doesn’t change the legal marriage regime at all, in any other respect. Whereas, in the context of my response, polygamy would require the creation of a new legal regime to cover its complex interrelations and the legal issues it would involve.

It’s limited to two people, because that’s how the law is written. As with the opposite sex requirement, that can be changed, by changing the law. But it would also require that much of family and divorce law be rewritten as well, to accommodate the complexity of a multi-person contract. Think of how assets would be treated in a community property state. Or in divorce. Or how custody would be treated. It could of course be done, and is done in other countries already. It would just take a lot of work to figure out how to treat it here.

Actually, you can’t cook it however you like. You can’t even cook whatever you like — my own state has a foie gras ban. If that isn’t the state imposing the morality of some folks on another group, I don’t know what is.

I think that regulation is put in place to protect geese from abusive treatment. In any case, my point stands, and I think you prove it by the lack of any actual requirements about cuisine itself. There are regulations on labeling for commercial products, but not for cuisine itself. And regulations to protect fraud. So you can’t see California wine as being of French origin, but you can still serve it any way you like. Even mixing red wine with fish, if you dare.

Cuisine itself is limited only by the marketplace. If people don’t like your food, they won’t come to your restaurant. If they do, they will. You can be endlessly creative in what kind of food you cook, without government interference in that, as long as you abide by basic health and safety regs, including fraudulent misrepresentation. Consumer protection, in other words, without imposing any particular values on the industry.

Same with marriage. True, you can’t beat your wife, but you can have any kind of marriage you like, within basic health and safety guidelines, baring criminal misconduct. Some people I’m sure think it’s very important to be able to beat their wives, and that the state is imposing its values on marriage by criminalizing this, but that’s not the same as insisting, say, that all marriages abide by the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual conduct.

It’s like that episode in Mad Men where they bring in the kids to teach the grown-ups what consumers want. The youth really know because they’re “more in tune with the times,” having been reared as consumer units. Whereas, the grown-ups had spent their youth surviving the Depression and fighting the War.

This consumerized younger generation had none of the manly skills that Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price valued, but on what mattered most – marketing useless products – they had the edge over their elders. Secretly, Don knew that. He was threatened by his new child colleagues who actually used the pimple cream they were hawking.

It’s hard to accept that what really matters doesn’t really matter anymore. In the Mad Men era of 1963, what had always mattered was about not to anymore. Are we at such a moment of shift?

Reason certainly matters less than it once did. And “feeling what you feel” uncritically seems to have fewer critics.

Like Miss Wurtzel from last month, we’ve made “careers out of our emotions.” When you live like that, you’ll still be subletting at 40!

“I see it among conservatives constantly – their arguments fail because they have abandoned – either out of sensitivity, fear or conviction – the idea that homosexual behavior and orientation is abnormal and of a different nature …”

This really is the crux of the matter — especially why the Church has failed at making a convincing case.

If the homosexual “orientation” is naturally good, then the acts proceeding from it are too. If this is so, the advocates of equality are right — and I would be on their side.

But if homosexuality is, in fact, a sexual dis-orientation, then the acts that follow are disordered. And, charitably the Church should foster correction.

Having never offered this type of charity, the Church now wants to stop SSM. Bad strategy.

Conservatives make their argument based on sexual biology, backed up by millennia of tradition of marriage being exclusively male-female. Pretty simple.

Progressives make theirs based on affective relationships. Marriage, as practiced today, is essentially that, an affective relationship involving sexual pleasure — though not necessarily with any procreative intent. Plus society’s concepts of marriage have changed over the centuries. Why can’t we change it to suit our times and let gays in on it? Yeah, why not — if that’s all it is? Me too. How could that be the end of the world?

But if conservatives are right — and it is in fact grounded in sexual biology, and it is ipso facto sexual in nature, properly speaking that is — then we cannot rationally open it up to gays. Can’t be done. Logically impossible. Invitation to chaos.

Then there’s a third group — the ones that don’t give a damn. Reason is of no concern to them. Neither is justice. So long as they’re personally happy, what do they care about civil rights, or social chaos? They may support SSM — what the hell! But their support is more out of indifference than solidarity.

It’s dueling Don Quijotes with Sancho Panza in the middle trying to get out.

Let’s quit nibbling around the edges and take a great big bite out of the middle of what this gay “marriage” thing is all about.

“Exclusive heterosexuality is f—ed up. It reflects a fear of people of the same sex, it’s anti-homosexual, and it is fraught with frustration. Heterosexual sex is f—ed up too; ask women’s liberation about what straight guys are like in bed. ”

Therefore, the promoters of gay “marriage” have deep contempt for society and it’s tradition of marriage, which gets in the way of the homosexual lifestyle. Furthermore:

“Traditional marriage is a rotten, oppressive institution. Those of us who have been in heterosexual marriages too often have blamed our gayness on the breakup of the marriage.”

Gays who were once in heterosexual marriages? Let me see if I got that oft-chanted mantra right, then:

“Ex gay no way!”
“Ex het, you bet!”

” No. They broke up because marriage is a contract which smothers both people, denies needs, and places impossible demands on both people. And we had the strength, again, to refuse to capitulate to the roles which were demanded of us.”"

So why do you demand to have those roles now, those same roles which you refused to capitulate to before?

Oh, yeah, and there is also this little jewel:

“Homosexuality is not a lot of things. It is not a makeshift in the absence of the opposite sex; it is not a hatred or rejection of the opposite sex; IT IS NOT GENETIC (caps mine)”

Gee, all we’ve heard lately is how homosexuality IS genetic. I guess the gay rights crowd reserves the exclusive right to say something one minute, then say the exact opposite of it the next minute, and we have to accept whatever it is they say and not question it or we’re bigots.

“it is not the result of broken homes except inasmuch as we could see the sham of American marriage. Homosexuality is the capacity to love someone of the same sex.”

But ” Heterosexual sex is f—ed up”

Heterosexuals bad.

Homosexuals good.

It’s a scam, folks, perpetuated with lies, propagated with increasing levels of intimidation.

Think of that scene from Cabaret, where one of the Hitler youth is singing, “Tomorrow belongs to me.” That’s what is going on today, before our very eyes.

Church Lady appears to have entirely missed the point of Erin’s analogy, and in doing so, has made Erin’s point rather nicely.

Erin clearly recognized that changing a circle into a square, or vice versa, changed almost everything about the first geometric shape, so that almost nothing in the second shape could be considered “just like” the first.

Because “To turn a square into a circle, you would have to change the position of every single point on the square,” the analogy nicely ILLUSTRATES Erin’s contention that “same sex marriage” is nothing like marriage of a man and a woman.

Analogy, of course, is not proof, but the analogy is an excellent illustration, logically speaking.

M. Worrell, have you noticed the comments on this thread alone? The people who are opposed to same-sex marriage aren’t going to warm up to the idea of everyone getting a domestic partnership.

Erin says that it’s like a circle pretending to be a square (of course if a square spins really fast, it can be mistaken for a circle, but that’s probably not what she’s talking about).

I have no idea who Mike Cullinan is quoting, but are you going to convince him that opposite-sex and same-sex couples should be treated the same? (Funny thing is, that’s exactly what my religious group believes: opposite-sex and same-sex couples should be treated the same. I wish someone would fight for my religious liberty.)

>I guess the gay rights crowd reserves the exclusive right to say something one minute, then say the exact opposite of it the next minute, and we have to accept whatever it is they say and not question it or we’re bigots.

Obviously you see a monolith where there are only people. As with everything else, there are different strokes for different folks. I happen to be a confirmed bachelor with no desire to tie the knot either way. Married gays have never done anything for me. But I think that allowing those who wish to marry as a secular contract is the right thing to do for many reasons.

As for the church solemnizing such relationships, I would not push for it. All I’d like is a restoration of the church’s old rites of “making of brothers”, which it seems to me is an eminently conservative thing to ask. Were you aware of these quasi-marital blessings, which flourished in Eastern Orthodoxy (generally the most conservative part of the universal church) for centuries (in a few corners, still do)? What argument would you make for denying them today?

Since the word “marriage” implies a husband and a wife, it must be a bother for gays contemplating marraige to work out who is going to play which role. The term “brothers” (or sisters) connotes no such distinction; hence I think that it is far a far more appropriate concept for the situation– at least it would be for me and mine– as well as addressing a need that the church, in her kindness and wisdom, had perceived hundreds of years before it ever percolated to the surface of a Western political forum. In the secular realm, the marriage bed may be necessary to avoid “discrimination” or the hypocrisy of “separate but equal”, but it is Procrustean just the same. The Good Shepherd, by contrast, knows his sheep and calls them each by name. That is to say, He discriminates in the best sense of the word. One would normally expect a more fitting and less awkward provision in the Body of Christ on earth than the state is able to make.

Church Lady appears to have entirely missed the point of Erin’s analogy, and in doing so, has made Erin’s point rather nicely.

Siarlys, I think you are missing my original point, which is that legally, only one requirement is changed in our marriage licensing laws in allowing SSM. Neither you nor Erin have refuted that simple point, I assume because you can’t.

By switching not just the goalposts, but the entire playing field, to some existential issue of the nature of human relationships and marriage, you confuse the original point, which still stands untouched by these arguments.

However, I’ll indulge you in that switch for a moment, to point out that even in this respect, relatively little changes. I actually know several gay couples, and many straight couples, and by and large, there’s just not much difference in their actual human relationships. They all go through very similar problems, have similar challenges, and relate to one another in an easily recognizable fashion. Intimate human relationships have so many differences, like fingerprints, but in the end, they all come from our own shared human nature. It is human nature that is determinative, not our particular sexual characteristics. And so no, a gay marriage is not some entirely different “shape” than a straight marriage. All marriages are different to some degree, but gay marriages intersect with straight marriages in most respects. They are not some different species of the human pattern. They are very, very human indeed.

I think the perception that gay and straight marriages are entirely different kinds of things, is very much a narcissistic conceit, grounded in the simple personal fact that many people can’t imagine themselves in a SSM. To them, it would be utterly bizarre and incomprehensible. I suppose in a way that many people once saw interracial marriages as something they couldn’t imagine themselves being involved in. Something alien, foreign, completely different. But, it turns out, it’s merely the narcissism of minor differences. Sexuality is still just sexuality.

Church Lady, you do love to hear yourself talk. I don’t bother arguing with you about the merits of issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, because when people start from mutually exclusive premises, there is no rational argument possible. We pick our premises, and vote on the difference, and the majority rules. Frankly, I don’t much care — I voted NO on my state’s “Defense of Marriage” amendment, I wouldn’t bother to vote FOR gay marriage provisions in our statutes, and I wouldn’t bother to vote against them.

I did, however, find your particular attempt to refute Erin amusing, because you vociferously insisted on pointing out precisely the flaw that was Erin’s point, about squares and circles, and then triumphantly proclaimed it a refutation of Erin, which it was not.

Believe it or not, words mean something, logic is logic, and you don’t score brownie points by overlooking these fundamentals. Since analogies are merely illustration, not proof, this actually doesn’t either sustain or refute Erin’s point, which is based on a premise entirely different from yours.

Erin thinks the relationship between male and female is fundamental to marriage. You think a loving couple inspired by mutual hormonal stimulation is definitive. I personally don’t much care whether homosexual acts are an offense against God, because I’m not tempted. There is no great virtue in refraining from acts that are not tempting, and may in fact feel repulsive. Now adultery I might have to worry about…

Ideologies that people follow are monolithic. I was quoting from the Gay Manifesto, San Francisco. Just as easily, I could have been quoting from the manifesto of another center of Gaydom, London, which calls for the destruction of the family as a relic of the patriarchal system.

Then or now, SF or London, it’s the selfsame ideology being espoused.

“As for the church solemnizing such relationships, I would not push for it. All I’d like is a restoration of the church’s old rites of “making of brothers”, which it seems to me is an eminently conservative thing to ask.”

You mean the Adelphopoiesis?

“Were you aware of these quasi-marital blessings, which flourished in Eastern Orthodoxy (generally the most conservative part of the universal church) for centuries (in a few corners, still do)? ”

Yes, I spent quite a bit of time researching them, they were not “quasi-marital”, though, but dealt with something else entirely.

“What argument would you make for denying them today?”

I wouldn’t, since they were a reconciliation ceremony for the heads of warring clans to bury the hatchet.

“Since the word “marriage” implies a husband and a wife, it must be a bother for gays contemplating marraige to work out who is going to play which role. The term “brothers” (or sisters) connotes no such distinction; hence I think that it is far a far more appropriate concept for the situation– at least it would be for me and mine– as well as addressing a need that the church, in her kindness and wisdom, had perceived hundreds of years before it ever percolated to the surface of a Western political forum.”

So you think “brother” is actually secret code that means “homosexual partner for life”. If you think the Church performed and sanctioned same-sex marriage long ago, try this on for size:

“Professor LOUIS CROMPTON (Author, “Homosexuality in Civilization”): And they were part of a group–and I’ll quote what he wrote about them–”who had assembled in the church where they performed some ceremonies of a horrible wickedness which sullied the sacred name of matrimony.” Two years later, the French philosopher Montaigne visited Rome and commented on the incident. And he identified the church, which is still standing, as the Church of St. John at the Porta Latina. The men were later captured and burned in the square in Rome where heretics were regularly executed.

Siarlys, I so love hearing you talk, because it reminds me of how easy it is to imagine one is making sense, when one simply isn’t. I honestly just don’t get your “logic”. I’m sure in some theoretical universe, gay couples are some sort of geometrical abomination, but not in mine. The ones I know of, I find them very similar to the straight couples I know. I don’t see what you seem to think is alien about them. No amount of argument is going to make me see what my eyes simply don’t experience first hand. Call that my self-delusion if you like, but it’s how I actually experience the world these gay couples live in. Asking me to see things otherwise, from some abstract theoretical argument you might offer, seems unreal to me. Perhaps you should get out of your head, and come down into life, where most of us actually live. It might be a shock at first, but I promise you, in the end it’s a much better place to live.

Church Laddy, if you can’t tell the difference between logical reasoning and factual truth, which are indeed two different things, I really won’t try to make it clear to your befuddled mind. It would be too much like having to explain a joke. I’m sure everyone else can tell the difference.

I didn’t say gay couples are alien. I said your premises and Erin’s are alien to each other.

I already knew Erin’s premises were different. That is what we were talking about. I also know that she approaches the matter from a different perspective, using theological logic rather than empirical reasoning. That’s the point. In the real world, logic means nothing if it isn’t grounded in observable facts. My point is that regardless of what Erin thinks about gay couples based on her theology, the simple reality is that their relationships are not alien couplings, but just as human as straight couples are, and strikingly similar in most respects.

I’m not sure what you think you were adding to the discussion, other than your usual desire to stick my pigtails in your inkwell. Please, come up with some better way to flirt.

I see it among conservatives constantly – their arguments fail because they have abandoned – either out of sensitivity, fear or conviction – the idea that homosexual behavior and orientation is abnormal and of a different nature – that is, unrelated in its essence to the male/female foundational structure of human life and society.

This is a very important point. When gay people were more heavily stigmatized, then the anti-SSM argument practically made itself. These days, you can watch prominent conservative writers like Douthat and Dreher struggle to explain that they have no problem with gay people — some of their best friends, after all — but they just shouldn’t be allowed to marry, because…

And in the other corner you’ve got a very a sympathetic-looking Navy officer who wants to marry her partner and have kids and live in a house with a white picket fence and a dog. I think the best the conservative can hope for, in that setting is to look like a nice guy following his religion’s strictures, like a Jew who doesn’t eat bacon or an Amish guy who drives his wagon to work every morning or a Muslim lady who wears a headscarf at the beach. Weird, but acceptable.

For general consideration, it seems to me that Church Lady repeats her own argument, several times over, each time saying “That was my POINT,” but never grasps the notion of dissecting what anyone else actually said in response. If she’s losing on a specific point, she restates her general point, as if nothing else transpired. Starting with Erin’s analogy to a square and a circle, then proceeding to Church Lady’s attempt to refute it (in which she actually sustained it), followed by a long winded ramble through rhetorical dead ends… does anyone see something of that nature? I’m not going to argue it with Church Lady. She’s obviously tone deaf.

Sadly, for those who advocate this choice of lifestyle, they are faced with immoveable obstacle: marriage reflects a natural biological relationship that serves as the basis for marriage from which are derived unique contributions to any particulat society. The support that marriage is between a man and a woman is evidenced further as to its practice universally around the globe.

Hence, people of the same sex cannot be married and their unions in no manner meet that prescription as to nature, biology and universal practice.

In fact, such relations contradict the very essence and physical reality of marriage.

The current definition of marriage in most states will be found constitutionally acceptable for the reasons Elite sets forth: it reflects a unique natural biological relationship. Whatever else people may desire to have recognized as a marriage is not “similarly situated.”

However, it is not civilly or constitutionally true that same-sex couples CANNOT be married. They can, and have been, in Massachusetts, New York, for a brief period in California, in DC… that is not binding on any church, nor upon God, but it is a civilly valid marriage because the civil authority authorized it.

Since they fail the test of how and why we define marriage between men and women —

those are not marriages. Ignoring the parameters and then call a thing that which bound by the parameters in no manner reflects the reality. I have no doubt that I could obtain a legal document classifying my person as a female as opposed to male.

That does not make me female, because some organization ignored certain aspects of what codies the female body. It only works for those who fall the move of adopting that authority alone says so. It’s fallacious. As fallacious as the decision by states and courts to call same sex unions marriages. They simply do not meet the standards which define marriage.

In such cases, just because the stste says so —- simply does not work. That is not the definition of marriage. The sate does not create marriages. It recognizes them. It provides an administrative management tool. Our legal structures reflect what is:

1. a unversal practice and
2. based on the biological and subsequent emotional bonds or vice versa that exists between men and women only and
3. the unique contribution that such union make to society.

The biological impossibilities, the unnatural expression in violation of natural process — preclude same unions to be marriages. The states and courts have ignored the rule so as to satify a personal desire. Ignoring the rules does not make the rule invalid. The state as is not uncommon is wrong. In this case your appeal to authority falls short.

Given what marriages reflect and reinforcehe states have been making these laws based on fallacious . The same mistakes have been made about human states of being before. This is exactly why the adoption argument does not work. Two people who choose this lifestyle, did not produce or contribute the children they are seeking to adopt. Merely adopting does not change the nature of the unnatural state of union or behavior they have chosen. It is abnormal. So proponents of this behavior contend, that infertile couples don’t produce children either. So the argument is that that abnormality makes their case. First, infertility is not a choice. And while it is rare, the abnormality is a biological creation state — not one prohibited by the design and function. To members of the same sex are prohibitted by design and function — abnormal to attempt it.

I will extend the position advocated for same sex marriage to the extreme.

We balk at the contention that a person should be permitted to engage in relations with their goat, cat, dog or horse. Fictional as the case may be, it rests on the same argumnents made for homosexual marriage.

We balk because a those animals as wonderful as they may be are not biologically designed to have relations with each other. One is human and the other is not. By design, a definitional line is drawn. But by the analysis of you and the state, design and function are not barriers to relationships, if that is in fact the case, then such relations are elligible for marriage and the benefits thereof. “Ridiculous,” you say, “such animals are incapable of giving consent.”

To wit I respond, the animal consent is by nonverbal agreement to remain, be drawn to the person in question. Any animal, who mounts or by their own attraction mounts said person or nonverbally expresses said desire, is expressing consent.

Two men nor two women cannot be married as they fail to meet the parameters that are marriage. I have no intention of ignoring the definition.

Elite, it is precisely “how we define marriage” that can be changed, as the social consensus, or civic polity, that is “we” changes. I’m not saying it necessarily makes sense, but it can be done.

A document cannot grant a woman a penis, or a man a set of ovaries and a womb (although modern surgical procedures can come close). A statute cannot enable a man to become pregnant, or a woman to impregnate, or two lesbians to conceive a child that shares the genes of each. But precisely because marriage is something “we” define, CIVIL marriage, that marriage which is defined and conferred by the laws of society, can be redefined.

As I said, this is not binding upon God, or upon any church, and has no spiritual significance whatsoever.